Our nightmare

The first few walk thru's of the house were exciting and inspirational. The foundation was solid. The previous family had only been out of the house for a few months (meaning the water, electricity, plumbing etc was functional). The wood work was totally fixable and the house was right up my alley.
The small windows up top are actually the back windows of cars... I'm not sure how I feel about that. Very resourceful. I personally don't mind it. The two little rooms on the front of the house were used to 'hang spearmint' (I will go into more detail about the hidden room under the stairs in the closet with a planter box and a heat lamp. Not sure how I feel about that either)

This is the living room. I loved it!!! Please notice the bright blue rocking horse hanging from the ceiling fan. :-) It came with the house. The man who built this house gathered all this wood from farmhouses he tore down or leftover wood from contracting jobs he acquired. The wood on the wall straight ahead was leftover from a job he did at the local Cracker Barrel. The stairs are from the county courthouse. The floors are from an old local farmhouse. The barn wood covering the walls in the adjoining room straight ahead was (quite obviously) from a barn that was over 80 years old. This house had so much personality and so much character. I immediately fell in love.

View into the master bedroom from the loft.

This is the master bedroom. The door furthest to the right goes to the back yard, the one in the middle is a bathroom, and the one on the left is a hallway out to the living room I posted above. As you can see, the wood is a constant throughout the entire house. Take notice of the dark cherry section of floor versus the lighter wood that travels into the bathroom. Below that section of floor is a very creepy hand dug cellar. The previous owner states they dug the cellar before they built. I think they dug the cellar after he got caught growing pot outside. Either way, we now have a lovely grow room below our future bedroom. The bifold door sticking out in that hallway leads to a closet. In the closet, there is a slab of wood. Lifting up that slab of wood reveals a stair case. You can draw your own conclusions. Creepy.

This picture was taken in the living room and the view is into the kitchen/dining area. And of my little puppy Ruca. She's so little and cute in this picture!!! But anyway. The wall furthest to the right has a window to the outside. The kitchen has a bathroom/pantry area allllll the way to the left which there will be pictures of later. There is a countertop on stilts in there but we have since taken it out. There was no way it was going to work. I feel the need to reiterate that a man built this house completely by himself (with instruction from his wife of course) and he just seemed to build on as they had children. The upstairs of the house has three bedrooms and a loft (each with a child in it) and the downstairs had two bedrooms. So the design isn't typical. But so increases my love.
   The house has a cistern and wood stove heat. It is essentially self sustaining. We could live in this house almost entirely off the grid if we had solar panels. But the tiniest of tiny tiny details revealed itself after we signed the papers. Stephen hates it. And I don't mean he just doesn't like it. He hates everything about it. He wantes city water and a gas furnace. He wants to be able to paint the drywall. He doesn't like the porches. The layout is not working for him at all. He detests this house. Why would he not mention this to me before I convinced him to purchase it? I am still trying to figure that out.

New beginnings

Cheers to a new start!!! I suppose I will begin by saying a little about myself. My name is Margaret Frances. I am an EMT-B and would love to be a paramedic. I want to join an emergency rescue squad and help with hurricanes, floods, tornadoes etc. I was going to a community college set to graduate with a regents bachelor of arts. Twenty three hours left until I graduate with a practically useless degree and they told me I was uneligible for financial aid. In their defense, I have been going to school for five years. And at the rate I was going, it would be another year and a half to finish. But I was going to pay it back! I promise! :D.
   The reality of the situation is I drank to much in college. I wasn't ready to decide what I wanted to do with my life so I took a little bit of everything until I could find something I wanted to stick with. Psychology almost interested me enough. But I'm not interested in being a psychologist. Due to lack of proper counselling and an extremely introverted personality, I only recently discovered that psychology is a great degree to graduate with when it comes to marketing because a graduate will possess the skills necessary to decipher what people want and need to hear in advertising. Blah.
   To be honest, the idea of not attending college is somewhat refreshing to me. I did not want to go to college directly after high school. I wanted to travel and experience. It absolutely blows that I am almost twenty three, recently married, and just purchased a house and now have the freedom to do the things I want (and the wonderful financial aid bills to go along with it) and all I want to do is finish my degree so I can have real money. But I'm trying to be positive. And the positive is that school sucks and I hated going. So I applied for a white water rafting job because I felt like it.
   My husband's name is Stephen and he is thirty years old. I've never met anyone like him. He is a paid fireman as well as a volunteer and he has always known what he wanted to be. That is probably why I fell in love with him. Opposites attract. If I could paint a picture what our relationship was like it would be of me standing in a field of flowers, under a tree, dancing in a big flowing dress, kerchief in one hand and the other, fingers spread, feeling the breeze flow between my fingers and I would be laughing. Stephen on the other hand would be leaning on the tree with his arms crossed, one ankle over the other, watching. Making sure I didn't hurt myself. Lol I don't know if it makes any sense to those reading, but it makes perfect sense to me. I am a free spirit and often times do things that put myself in danger. Stephen is very safe. He takes the risks necessary to feel alive without taking the risks that could kill you. He has never drank, smoked, tried a drug, and only drinks coffee about once a week. I on the other hand drink so much I black out every time, smoked about a pack a day, went to festivals, enjoyed my fair share of pot, and would probably never get out of bed without caffeine. It is absolutely unreal how different the things we do are compared to who we are and how we get along. But all of those silly things never stopped Stephen from enjoying the chase and eventually he caught me and pulled me back into the real world. I feel strongly that he saved my life. I'll never be able to repay him for that. But enough of the mushy stuff. Before you go off thinking our marriage is doomed to fail, our similarities are much stronger than our differences. We travel and camp and both enjoy the adrenaline rush associated with a disaster because we both have a strong desire to help. We scuba dive together, EMT together, and rescue together. It is a beautiful thing.
  I am gonna end the introduction here because it's getting beyond the point that I would want to read it and transitioning into the "I think I'll skip this part" stage. Next post: Headache house.